Sialkot tragedy: Two accused confess crime before police

LAHORE Dec 04,2021- The two accused Talha and Farhan have confessed the crime before the police, says reports.

Police investigation into the Sialkot tragedy is underway. During the investigation, 110 persons have been identified so far, including 13 main accused. Video of 160 CCTV cameras was obtained, data of mobile phones is being obtained.

 According to the police report, the main accused Farhan Idrees has been arrested. The arrested accused Junaid was seen taking selfie with the burnt body.

 Talha alias Basit, who confessed to the crime in front of the media, and Saboor Butt, the accused who provoked the workers, were also arrested.

Police claim to have arrested 145 suspects in Sialkot incident

Punjab Police sent preliminary report of Sialkot tragedy to authorities.

According to sources, in the post-mortem, most of the body of Sri Lankan citizen Priyantha was found burnt. The bones of the part that survived the fire were found broken.

Police are investigating the tragic death of a citizen, raids and operations to arrest the accused have been going on since night.

According to a Punjab police spokesman, raids were carried out at more than 50 places during the night and Farhan, the main accused in the incident, was arrested.

A further 110 people have been arrested and 900 terrorism cases have been registered against them.

A spokesman for the Punjab Police said that the investigation into the detained accused was underway and the investigation was helping in identifying the other accused.

The incident

The Sri Lankan manager of a factory was lynched to death and his body was burnt by hundreds of people in Sialkot yesterday on charges of blasphemy.

 Furious workers of a garment factory in Sialkot on Friday tortured their Sri Lankan general manager to death over allegations of blasphemy and set the body on fire.

Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan Christian, had been working at Rajco Industries for 10 years.

The employees of Rajco Industries, located on Wazirabad Road, staged a protest on the premises alleging that Sri Lankan general manager Kumara, had committed blasphemy. On receiving information about the protest, three personnel of the Uggoki police reached the spot, but the mob clearly outnumbered them, making them silent spectators.

Due to protest traffic on Wazirabad Road suspended and were joined by all the factory workers and a large number of locals. On seeing the mob gradually swell from a few dozen to hundreds, Mr Kumara dashed to the roof. Shouting slogans, the charged protesters chased him, dragged him out on the road and tortured him with kicks, stones and iron rods, killing him on the spot. The mob then set the body on fire.

Witnesses Mohammad Iftikhar and Mohammad Ilyas said had the DPO responded to the sensitive matter on time, the killing could have been avoided. They held police’s incompetence responsible for the gruesome incident.

In 2010 two brothers were lynched by angry protesters owing to police’s incompetence and failure to respond on time.

FIR lodged

A first information report of the incident was registered at the Uggoki police station for aggravated murder and burning of the body against dozens of unidentified people under terrorism and murder provisions. Police collected videos of the torture from social media.